I have this lens and regret I bought it, even if I paid very littler for
it. Its not very sharp, at least not my copy, and the min focus thing
is a real pain. Because of these two issues, I rarely use it anymore,
and resort to my 24-90 when I need a range like that.
rg
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
I picked up an old F35-135/3.5-4.5 for my D to use in places where I
wanted to go from normal to wide, like family attending kid's sports game,
without a lot of lens swapping (close shots of family on the sidelines,
long shots of kid playing on the field). I understood it was sharp lens,
though that was based on only one quote at Stan's site.
I haven't looked at test shots yet, but I'm startled at the very long
minimum-focus distance at the wide end. My rough measurement shows that
it's around 15 feet! That makes it useless as a normal for family snaps;
I'd instead have to step way back and zoom in closer to 135mm, where it
focuses the closest.
At 135mm, my rough measurement showed that it focused down to about 4' 9",
longer than the official 0.75 meters.
It has 3 extra focus markers marked 135, 50, & 35. The one marked 35 seems
to suggest that the minimum focus distance at 35mm is around 7 feet.
The FA24-90 and the FA28-105/3.2-4.5 both let me focus very close at the
wide end -- roughly 1.5 feet for both -- even though not quite as close as
at the long end.
Given this limitation of the 35-135, I'd be much better off using the
28-105 and cropping more at the long end.
Is the 35-135 very unusual this way? Is something likely wrong with my
copy that wide-end minimum focus is more like 15 feet than the seemingly
marked 7 feet? But even 7 feet is really long compared to the others. Is
35-135 a difficult range to design?
Many Thanks,
Greg
